Katina Michael: Dan, let’s start at the end of your story which was the beginning of your reformation. What happened the day you got caught for credit card fraud?

Dan DeFilippi: It was December 2004 in Rochester, New York. I was sitting in my windowless office getting work done, and all of a sudden the door burst open, and this rush of people came flying in. “Get down under your desks. Show your hands. Hands where I can see them.” And before I could tell what was going on, my hands were cuffed behind my back and it was over. That was the end of that chapter of my life.

Katina Michael: Can you tell us what cybercrimes you committed and for how long?

Dan DeFilippi: I had been running credit card fraud, identity theft, document forgery pretty much as my fulltime job for about three years, and before that I had been a hacker.

Katina Michael: Why fraud? What led you into that life?

Dan DeFilippi: Everybody has failures. Not everybody makes great decisions in life. So why fraud? What led me to this? I mean, I had great parents, a great upbringing, a great family life. I did okay in school, and you know, not to stroke my ego too much, but I know I am intelligent and I could succeed at whatever I chose to do. But when I was growing up, one of the things that I’m really thankful for is my parents taught me to think for myself. They didn’t just focus on remembering knowledge. They taught me to learn, to think, to understand. And this is really what the hacker mentality is all about. And when I say hacker, I mean it in the traditional sense. I don’t mean it as somebody in there stealing from your company. I mean it as somebody out there seeking knowledge, testing the edges, testing the boundaries, pushing the limits, and seeing how things work. So growing up, I disassembled little broken electron­ics and things like that, and as time went on this slowly progressed into, you know, a so-called hacker.

Katina Michael: Do you remember when you actually earned your first dollar by conducting cybercrime?

Dan DeFilippi: My first experience with money in this field was towards the end of my high school. And I realized that my electronics skills could be put to use to do something beyond work. I got involved with a small group of hackers that were trying to cheat advertising systems out of money, and I didn’t even make that much. I made a couple of hundred dollars over, like, a year or something. It was pretty much insignificant. But it was that experience, that first step, that kind of showed me that there was something else out there. And at that time I knew theft and fraud was wrong. I mean, I thought it was stealing. I knew it was stealing. But it spiraled downwards after that point.

Katina Michael: Can you elaborate on how your thinking developed towards earn­ing money through cybercrime?

Dan DeFilippi: I started out with these little things and they slowly, slowly built up and built up and built up, and it was this easy money. So this initial taste of being able to make small amounts, and eventually large amounts of money with almost no work, and doing things that I really enjoyed doing was what did it for me. So from there, I went to college and I didn’t get involved with credit card fraud right away. What I did was, I tried to find a market. And I’ve always been an entrepreneur and very business-minded, and I was at school and I said, “What do people here need? ... I need money, I don’t really want to work for somebody else, I don’t like that.” I realized people needed fake IDs. So I started selling fake IDs to college students. And that again was a taste of easy money. It was work but it wasn’t hard work. And from there, there’s a cross-over here between forged documents and fraud. So that cross-over is what drew me in. I saw these other people doing credit card fraud and mak­ing money. I mean, we’re talking about serious money. We’re talking about thousands of dollars a day with only a few hours of work and up.

Katina Michael: You strike me as someone who is very ethical. I almost cannot imagine you committing fraud. I’m trying to understand what went wrong?

Dan DeFilippi: And where were my ethics and morals? Well, the problem is when you do something like this, you need to rationalize it, okay? You can’t worry about it. You have to rationalize it to yourself. So everybody out there commit­ting fraud rationalizes what they’re doing. They justify it. And that’s just how our brains work. Okay? And this is something that comes up a lot on these online fraud forums where people discuss this stuff openly. And the question is posed: “Well, why do you do this? What motivates you? Why, why is this fine with you? Why are you not, you know, opposed to this?” And often, and the biggest thing I see, is like, you know, the Robin Hood scenario- “I’m just stealing from a faceless corporation. It’s victimless.” Of course, all of us know that’s just not true. It impacts the consumers. But everybody comes up with their own reason. Everybody comes up with an explanation for why they’re doing it, and how it’s okay with them, and how they can actually get away with doing it.

Katina Michael: But how does a sensitive young man like you just not realize the impact they were having on others during the time of committing the crimes?

Dan DeFilippi: I’ve never really talked about that too much before... Look the aver­age person when they know they’ve acted against their morals feels they have done wrong; it’s an emotional connection with their failure and emotionally it feels negative. You feel that you did something wrong no one has to tell you the crime type, you just know it is bad. Well, when you start doing these kinds of crimes, you lose that discerning voice in your head. I was completely dis­connected from my emotions when it came to these types of fraud. I knew that they were ethically wrong, morally wrong, and you know, I have no interest in committing them ever again, but I did not have that visceral reaction to this type of crime. I did not have that guilty feeling of actually stealing something. I would just rationalize it.

Katina Michael: Ok. Could I ask you whether the process of rationalization has much to do with making money? And perhaps, how much money did you actu­ally make in conducting these crimes?

Dan DeFilippi: This is a pretty common question and honestly I don’t have an answer. I can tell you how much I owe the government and that’s ... well, I suppose I owe Discover Card ... I owed $209,000 to Discover Card Credit Card Company in the US. Beyond that, I mean, I didn’t keep track. One of the things I did was, and this is kind of why I got away with it for so long, is I didn’t go crazy. I wasn’t out there every day buying ten laptops. I could have but chose not to. I could’ve worked myself to the bone and made millions of dollars, but I knew if I did that the risk would be significantly higher. So I took it easy. I was going out and doing this stuff one or two days a week, and just living comfortably but not really in major luxury. So honestly, I don’t have a real figure for that. I can just tell you what the government said.

Katina Michael: There is a perception among the community that credit card fraud is sort of a non-violent crime because the “actor” being defrauded is not a person but an organization. Is this why so many people lie to the tax office, for instance?

Dan DeFilippi: Yeah, I do think that’s absolutely true. If we are honest about it, everyone has lied about something in their lifetime. And people... you’re right, you’re absolutely right, that people observe this, and they don’t see it in the big picture. They think of it on the individual level, like I said, and people see this as a faceless corporation, “Oh, they can afford it.” You know, “no big deal”. You know, “Whatever, they’re ripping off the little guy.” You know. People see it that way, and they explain it away much easier than, you know, somebody going off and punching someone in the face and then proceeding to steal their wallet. Even if the dollar figure of the financial fraud is much higher, people are generally less concerned. And I think that’s a real problem because it might entice some people into committing these crimes because they are considered “soft”. And if you’re willing to do small things, it’s going to, as in my case, eventually spiral you downwards. I started with very small fraud, and then got larger. Not that everybody would do that. Not that the police officer taking the burger for free from Burger King is going to step up to, you know, to extortion or something, but certainly it could, could definitely snowball and lead to something.

Katina Michael: It has been about 6 years since you were arrested. Has much has changed in the banking sector regarding triggers or detection of cybercriminal acts?

Dan DeFilippi: Yeah. What credit card companies are doing now is pattern match­ing and using software to find and root out these kind of things. I think that’s really key. You know, they recognize patterns of fraud and they flag it and they bring it out. I think using technology to your advantage to identify these patterns of fraud and investigate, report and root them out is probably, you know, one of the best techniques for dollar returns.

Katina Michael: How long were you actually working for the US Secret Service, as a matter of interest? Was it the length of your alleged, or so-called prison term, or how did that work?

Dan DeFilippi: No. So I was arrested early December 2004. I started working with the Secret Service in April 2005, so about six months later. And I worked with them fulltime almost for two years. I cut back on the hours a little bit towards the end, because I went back to university. But it was, it was almost exactly two years, and most of it was fulltime.

Katina Michael: I’ve heard that the US is tougher on cybercrime relative to other crimes. Is this true?

Dan DeFilippi: The punishment for credit card fraud is eight-and-a-half years in the US.

Katina Michael: Do these sentences reduce the likelihood that someone might get caught up in this kind of fraud?

Dan DeFilippi: It’s a contested topic that’s been hotly debated for a long time. And also in ethics, you know, it’s certainly an interesting topic as well. But I think it depends on the type of person. I wasn’t a hardened criminal, I wasn’t the fella down on the street, I was just a kid playing around at first that just got more serious and serious as time went on. You know, I had a great upbring­ing, I had good morals. And I think to that type of person, it does have an impact. I think that somebody who has a bright future, or could have a bright future, and could throw it all away for a couple of hundred thousand dollars, or whatever, they recognize that, I think. At least the more intelligent people recognize it in that ... you know, “This is going to ruin my life or potentially ruin a large portion of my life.” So, I think it’s obviously not the only deterrent but it can certainly be useful.

Katina Michael: You note that you worked alone. Was this always the case? Did you recruit people to assist you with the fraud and where did you go to find these people?

Dan DeFilippi: Okay. So I mainly worked alone but I did also work with other people, like I said. I was very careful to protect myself. I knew that if I had partners that I worked with regularly it was high risk. So what I did was on these discussion forums, I often chatted with people beyond just doing the credit card fraud, I did other things as well. I sold fake IDs online. I sold the printed cards online. And because I was doing this, I networked with people, and there were a few cases where I worked with other people. For example, I met somebody online. Could have been law enforcement, I don’t know. I would print them a card, send it to them, they would buy something in the store, they would mail back the item, the thing they bought, and then I would sell them online and we would split the money 50/50.

Katina Michael: Was this the manner you engaged others? An equal split?

Dan DeFilippi: Yes, actually, exactly the same deal for instance, with the person I was working with in person, and that person I met through my fake IDs. When I had been selling the fake IDs, I had a network of people that resold for me at the schools. He was one of the people that had been doing that. And then when he found out that I was going to stop selling IDs, I sort of sold him my equipment and he kind of took over. And then he realized I must have something else going on, because why would I stop doing it, it must be pretty lucrative. So when he knew that, you know, he kept pushing me. “What are you doing? Hey, I want to get involved.” And this and that. So it was that person that I happened to meet in person that in the end was my downfall, so to speak.

Katina Michael: Did anyone, say a close family or friend, know what you were doing?

Dan DeFilippi: Absolutely not. No. And I, I made it a point to not let anyone know what I was doing. I almost made it a game, because I just didn’t tell anybody anything. Well, my family I told I had a job, you know, they didn’t know... but all my friends, I just told them nothing. They would always ask me, you know, “Where do you get your money? Where do you get all this stuff?” and I would just say, “Well, you know, doing stuff.” So it was a mystery. And I kind of enjoyed having this mysterious aura about me. You know. What does this guy do? And nobody ever thought it would be anything illegitimate. Everybody thought I was doing something, you know, my own webs ites, or maybe thought I was doing something like pornography or something. I don’t know. But yeah, I definitely did not tell anybody else. I didn’t want anybody to know.

Katina Michael: What was the most outrageous thing you bought with the money you earned from stolen credit cards?

Dan DeFilippi: More than the money, the outrageous things that I did with the cards is probably the matter. In my case the main motivation was not the money alone, the money was almost valueless to a degree. Anything that anyone could buy with a card in a store, I could get for free. So, this is a mind-set change a fraudster goes through that I didn’t really highlight yet. But money had very little value to me, directly, just because there was so much I could just go out and get for free. So I would just buy stupid random things with these stolen cards. You know, for example, the case where I actually ended up leading to my arrest, we had gone out and we had purchased a laptop before that one that failed, and we bought pizza. You know? So you know, a $10 charge on a stolen credit card for pizza, risking arrest, you know, for, for a pizza. And I would buy stupid stuff like that all the time. And just because I knew it, I had that experience, I could just get away with it mostly.

Katina Michael: And on that line of thinking, had you ever met one of your victims? And I don’t mean the credit card company. I actually mean the individual whose credit card you defrauded?

Dan DeFilippi: So I haven’t personally met anyone but I have read statements. So as part of sentencing, the prosecutor solicited statements from victims. And the mind-set is always, “Big faceless corporation, you know, you just call your bank and they just, you know, reverse the charges and no big deal. It takes a little bit of time, but you know, whatever.” And the prosecutor ended up get­ting three or four statements from individuals who actually were impacted by this, and honestly, you know, I felt very upset after reading them. And I do, I still go back and I read them every once in a while. I get this great sinking feeling, that these people were affected by it. So I haven’t actually personally met anyone but just those statements.

Katina Michael: How much of hacking do you think is acting? To me traditional hacking is someone sort of hacking into a website and perhaps downloading some data. However, in your case, there was a physical presence, you walked into the store and confronted real people. It wasn’t all card-not-present fraud where you could be completely anonymous in appearance.

Dan DeFilippi: It was absolutely acting. You know, I haven’t gone into great detail in this interview, but I did hack credit card information and stuff, that’s where I got some of my info. And I did online fraud too. I mean, I would order stuff off websites and things like that. But yeah, the being in the store and playing that role, it was totally acting. It was, like I mentioned, you are playing the part of a normal person. And that normal person can be anybody. You know. You could be a high-roller, or you could just be some college student going to buy a laptop. So it was pure acting. And I like to think that I got reasonably good at it. And I would come up with scenarios. You know, ahead of time. I would think of scenarios. And answers to situations. I came up with techniques that I thought worked pretty well to talk my way out of bad situations. For example, if I was going to go up and purchase something, I might say to the cashier, before they swiped the card, I’d say, “Oh, that came to a lot more than I thought it would be. I hope my card works.” So that way, if something happened where the card was declined or it came up call for authorization, I could say, “Oh yeah, I must not have gotten my payment” or something like that. So, yeah, it was definitely acting.

Katina Michael: You’ve mentioned this idea of downward spiraling. Could you elaborate?

Dan DeFilippi: I think this is partially something that happens and it happens if you’re in this and do this too much. So catching people early on, before this takes effect is important. Now, when you’re trying to catch people involved in this, you have to really think about these kinds of things. Like, why are they doing this? Why are they motivated? And the thought process, like I was saying, is definitely very different. In my case, because I had this hacker background, and I wasn’t, you know, like some street thug who just found a computer. I did it for more than just the money. I mean, it was certainly because of the chal­lenge. It was because I was doing things I knew other people weren’t doing. I was kind of this rogue figure, this rebel. And I was learning at the edge. And especially, if I could learn something, or discover something, some technique, that I thought nobody else was using or very few people were using it, to me that was a rush. I mean, it’s almost like a drug. Except with a drug, with an addict, you’re chasing that “first high” but can’t get back to it, and with credit card fraud, your “high” is always going up. The more money you make, the better it feels. The more challenges you complete, the better you feel.

Katina Michael: You make it sound so easy. That anyone could get into cybercrime. What makes it so easy?

Dan DeFilippi: So really, you’ve got to fill the holes in the systems so they can’t be exploited. What happens is crackers, i.e. criminal hackers, and fraudsters, look for easy access. If there are ten companies that they can target, and your company has weak security, and the other nine have strong security, they’re going after you. Okay? Also, in the reverse. So if your company has strong security and nine others have weak security, well, they’re going to have a field-day with the others and they’re just going to walk past you. You know, they’re just going to skip you and move on to the next target. So you need to patch the holes in your technology and in your organization. I don’t know if you’ve noticed recently, but there’s been all kinds of hacking in the news. The PlayStation network was hacked and a lot of US targets. These are basic things that would have been discovered had they had proper controls in place, or proper security auditing happening.

Katina Michael: Okay, so there is the systems focus of weaknesses. But what about human factor issues?

Dan DeFilippi: So another step to the personnel is training. Training really is key. And I’m going to give you two stories, very similar but with totally different outcomes, that happened to me. So a little bit more about what I used to do frequently. I would mainly print fake credit cards, put stolen data on those cards and use them in store to go and purchase items. Electronics, and things like that, to go and re-sell them. So ... and in these two stories, I was at a big- box well-known electronics retailer, with a card with a matching fake ID. I also made the driver’s licenses to go along with the credit cards. And I was at this first location to purchase a laptop. So pick up your laptop and then go through the standard process. And when committing this type of crime you have to have a certain mindset. So you have to think, “I am not committing a crime. I am not stealing here. I am just a normal consumer purchasing things. So I am just buying a laptop, just like any other person would go into the store and buy a laptop.” So in this first story, I’m in the store, purchasing a laptop. Picked it out, you know, went through the standard process, they went and swiped my card. And it came up with a ‘CFA’ – call for authorization. Now, a call for authorization is a case where it’s flagged on the computer and you actually have to call in and talk to an operator that will then verify additional information to make sure it’s not fraud. If you’re trying to commit fraud, it’s a bad thing. You can’t verify this, right? Right? So this is a case where it’s very possible that you could get caught, so you try to talk your way out of the situation. You try to walk away, you try to get out of it. Well, in this case, I was unable to escape. I was unable to talk my way out of it, and they did the call for authorization. They called in. We had to go up to the front of the store, there was a customer service desk, and they had somebody up there call it in and discuss this with them. And I didn’t overhear what they were saying. I had to stand to the side. About five or ten minutes later, I don’t know, I pretty much lost track of time at that point, they come back to me and they said, “I’m sorry, we can’t complete this transaction because your information doesn’t match the information on the credit card account.” That should have raised red flags. That should have meant the worse alarm bells possible.

Katina Michael: Indeed.

Dan DeFilippi: There should have been security coming up to me immediately. They should have notified higher people in the organization to look into the matter. But rather than doing that, they just came up to me, handed me back my cards and apologized. Poor training. So just like a normal consumer, I act surprised and alarmed and amused. You know, and I kind of talked my way out of this too, “You know, what are you talking about? I have my ID and here’s my card. Obviously this is the real information.” Whatever. They just let me walk out of the store. And I got out of there as quickly as possible. And you know, basically walked away and drove away. Poor training. Had that person had the proper training to understand what was going on and what the situation was, I probably would have been arrested that day. At the very least, there would have been a foot-chase.

Katina Michael: Unbelievable. That was very poor on the side of the cashier. And the other story you were going to share?

Dan DeFilippi: The second story was the opposite experience. The personnel had proper training. Same situation. Different store. Same big-box electronic store at a different place. Go in. And this time I was actually with somebody else, who was working with me at the time. We go in together. I was posing as his friend and he was just purchasing a computer. And this time we, we didn’t really approach it like we normally did. We kind of rushed because we’d been out for a while and we just wanted to leave, so we kind of rushed it faster than a normal person would purchase a computer. Which was unusual, but not a big deal. The person handling the transaction tried to upsell, upsell some things, warranties, accessories, software, and all that stuff, and we just, “No, no, no, we don’t ... we just want to, you know, kind of rush it through.” Which is kind of weird, but okay, it happens.

Katina Michael: I’m sure this would have raised even a little suspicion however.

Dan DeFilippi: So when he went to process the transaction, he asked for the ID with the credit card, which happens at times. But at this point the person I was with started getting a little nervous. He wasn’t as used to it as I was. My biggest thing was I never panicked, no matter what the situation. I always tried to not show nervousness. And so he’s getting nervous. The guy’s checking his ID, swipes the card, okay, finally going to go through this, and call for authorization. Same situation. Except for this time, you have somebody here who’s trying todo the transaction and he is really, really getting nervous. He’s shifting back and forth. He’s in a cold sweat. He’s fidgeting. Something’s clearly wrong with this transaction. Now, the person who was handling this transaction, the person who was trying to take the card payment and everything, it happened to be the manager of this department store. He happened to be well-trained. He happened to know and realize that something was very wrong here. Somethingwas not right with this transaction. So the call for authorization came up. Now, again, he had to go to the front of the store. He, he never let that credit card and fake ID out of his hands. He held on to them tight the whole time. There was no way we could have gotten them back. So he goes up to the front and he says, “All right, well, we’re going to do this.” And we said, “Okay, well, we’ll go and look at the stock while you’re doing it.” You know. I just sort of tried to play off, and as soon as he walked away, I said, “We need to get out of here.” And we left; leaving behind the ID and card. Some may not realize it as I am retelling the story, but this is what ended up leading to my arrest. They ran his photo off his ID on the local news network, somebody recognized him, turned him in, and he turned me in. So this was an obvious case of good, proper training. This guy knew how to handle the situation, and he not only prevented that fraud from happening, he prevented that laptop from leaving the store. But he also helped to catch me, and somebody else, and shot down what I was doing. So clearly, you know, failing to train people leads to failure. Okay? You need to have proper training. And you need to be able to handle the situation.

Katina Michael: What did you learn from your time at the Secret Service?

Dan DeFilippi: So a little bit more in-depth on what I observed of cybercriminals when I was working with the Secret Service. Now, this is going to be a little aside here, but it’s relevant. So people are arrogant. You have to be arrogant to commit a crime, at some level. You have to think you can get away with it. You’re not going to do it if you can’t, you know, if you think you’re going to get caught. So there’s arrogance there. And this same arrogance can be used against them. Up until the point where I got caught in the story I just told you that led to my arrest, I was arrogant. I actually wasn’t protecting myself as well as I had been, should have been. Had I been investigated closer, had law enforcement being monitoring me, they could have caught me a lot earlier. I left traces back to my office. I wasn’t very careful with protecting my office, and they could have come back and found me. So you can play off arrogance but also ignorance, obviously. They go hand-in-hand. So the more arrogant somebody is, the more risk they’re willing to take. One of the things we found frequently works to catch people was email. Most people don’t realize that email actually contains the IP address of your computer. This is the identifier on the Internet to distinguish who you are. Even a lot of criminals who are very intelligent, who are involved in this stuff, do not realize that email shows this. And it’s very easy. You just look at the source of the email and boom, there you go. You’ve got somebody’s location. This was used countless times, over and over, to catch people. Now, obviously the real big fish, the people who are really intelligent and really in this, take steps to protect themselves with that, but then those are the people who are supremely arrogant.

Katina Michael: Can you give us a specific example?

Dan DeFilippi: One case that happened a few years ago, let’s call the individual “Ted”. He actually ran a number of these online forums. These are “carding” forums, online discussion boards, where people commit these crimes. And he was extremely arrogant. He was extremely, let’s say, egotistical as well. He was very good at what he did. He was a good cracker, though he got caught multiple times. So he actually ran one of these sites, and it was a large site, and in the process, he even hacked law enforcement computers and found out information about some of these other operations that were going on. Actu­ally outed some, some informants, but the people didn’t believe him. A lot of people didn’t believe him. And his arrogance is really what led to his downfall. Because he was so arrogant he thought that he could get away with everything. He thought that he was protecting himself. And the fact of the matter was, law enforcement knew who he was almost the whole time. They tracked him back using basic techniques just like using email. Actually email was used as part of the evidence, but they actually found him before that. And it was his arrogance that really led to his getting arrested again, because he just didn’t protect himself well enough. And this really I cannot emphasize it enough, but this can really be used against people.

Katina Michael: Do you think that cybercrimes will increase in size and number and impact?

Dan DeFilippi: Financial crime is going up and up. And everybody knows this. The reality is that technology works for criminals as much as it works for businesses. Large organizations just can’t evolve fast enough. They’re slow in comparison to cybercriminals.

Katina Michael: How so?

Dan DeFilippi: A criminal’s going to use any tools they can to commit their crimes. They’re going to stay on top of their game. They’re going to be at the forefront of technology. They’re going to be the ones out there pioneering new tech­niques, finding the holes before anybody else, in new systems to get access to your data. They’re going to be the ones out there, and combining that with the availability of information. When I started hacking back in the ‘90s, it was not easy to learn. You really pretty much had to go into these chat-rooms and become kind of like an apprentice. You had to have people teach you.

Katina Michael: And today?

Dan DeFilippi: Well after the 2000s, when I started doing the identification stuff, there was easier access to data. There were more discussion boards, places where you could learn about these things, and then today it’s super easy to find any of this information. Myself, I actually wrote some tutorials on how to conduct credit card fraud. I wrote, like, a guide to in-store carding. I included how to go about it, what equipment to use, what to purchase, and it’s all out there in the public domain. You don’t even have to understand any of this. You know, you could know nothing about technology, spend a few hours online searching for this stuff, learn how to do it, and order the stuff overnight and the next day you could be out there going and doing this stuff. That’s how easy it is. And that’s why it’s really going up, in my opinion.

Katina Michael: Do you think credit card fraudsters realize the negative conse­quences of their actions?

Dan DeFilippi: People don’t realize that there is a real negative consequence to this nowadays. I’m not sure what the laws are in Australia about identity theft and credit card fraud, but in the United States, it used to be very, very easy to get away with. If you were caught, it would be a slap on the wrist. You would get almost nothing happening to you. It was more like give the money back, and possibly serve jail time if it was a repeat offence, but really that was no deterrent. Then it exploded post dot com crash, then a few years ago, we passed a new law that it’s a mandatory two years in prison if you commit identity theft. And credit card fraud is considered identity theft in the United States. So you’re guaranteed of some time in jail if caught.

Katina Michael: Do you think people are aware of the penalties?

Dan DeFilippi: People don’t realize it. And they think, “Oh, it’s nothing, you know, a slap on the wrist.” There is a need for more awareness, and campaigning on this matter. People need to be aware of the consequences of their actions. Had I realized how much time I could serve for this kind of crime, I probably would have stopped sooner. Long story short, because I worked with the Se­cret Service and trained them for a few years, I managed to keep myself out of prison. Had I not done that, I would have actually been facing eight-and-a-half years. That’s serious, especially for somebody who’s in their early 20s. And really had that happened, my future would have been ruined, I think. I probably would have become a lifelong criminal because prisons are basically teaching institutions for crime. So really I, had I known, had I realized it, I wouldn’t have done it. And I think especially younger people, if they realize that the major consequences to these actions, that they can be caught nowadays, that there are people out there looking to catch them, that really would help cut back on this. Also catching people earlier of course is more ideal. Had I been caught early on, before my mind-set had changed and the emotional ties had been broken, I think I would have definitely stopped before it got this far. It would have made a much bigger impact on me. And that’s it.